Br. Lawrence Egbert

Edward Francis Flood was born on December 4, 1876, in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of Matthew and Catherine Magher Flood. He was one of six children and he emigrated to the United States in 1909 where a year later he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri at the age of thirty-four, where he received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Lawrence Egbert. In 1911-12 he was assigned to La Salle Institute in Glencoe and again in 1914-16. In 1912 he went to Christian Brothers College in St. Louis, Missouri, and again from 1916 to 1918. He made his first trip to Memphis when assigned to Christian Brothers College in 1918 and he remained there until being transferred to Heffron High School in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1925. Brother Lawrence Egbert taught at St. Mel High School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1925, at De La Salle High School in Kansas City in 1926 and in the New York District from 1927 to 1937. When he returned to the Midwest he taught at De La Salle High School in Chicago and Minneapolis in 1937 before being transferred to Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he would spend the remainder of his life. Greatly loved by the students, faculty and staff, he was nicknamed "Brother Candybar." On his ninety-fifth birthday the bell in the College bell tower was tolled ninety-five times in his honor. He entered Ave Maria Guild Home in Memphis seventeen months before his death in his 100th year, having served in Memphis for forty-five years and as a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-six years.